Making Halloween Count with a Speech Delay

With Halloween fast approaching, I wanted to give some tips for trick-or-treating and how to use this Holiday to build speech and language skills!

Lets start with kids who are more on the severe side.  If you child can't put two words together, has a low vocabulary, or isn't understandable due to articulation errors, Halloween can be a nightmare.  Pun intended.

Over stimulation, darkness, pressure to say "trick or treat" and "thank you" at every turn, and sugar highs!  Sounds like a perfect recipe for a tantrum and crappy Halloween pictures.   One great way to reduce the stress is to take the speaking part out.  I don't usually recommend NOT talking, but for really young kids with big speech problems, it can really make things go more smoothly.

For my preschoolers who may struggle with this, I made little signs for them to take out on Halloween night.  One side says "trick or treat" with a candy bag, the other side says "thank you!"  Using a picture card instead of words ensures that your child can participate in Halloween with minimal pressure and prevents a possible tantrum on a strangers porch.  Win win.

Sound like a great solution for you?  Print off these pictures (that I found for free from a google search) and tape them to a pencil or Popsicle stick and enjoy!

If your child can say "trick or treat" and "thank you," you can do some really great activities to build language and practice speech sounds.

SEQUENCING: Knowing the order of action is an important skill for telling stories, following directions, and retelling events (i.e. answering the "tell me what you did today" question).  Halloween is a perfect opportunity to practice sequencing!  I nabbed a few pics from google of each step of trick or treating (you can increase or decrease the number of steps based on your child's level.  Most preschoolers should do 3-4).

Go through each step together, then mix up the pictures and put them in the right order.  Have your child tell you what happens in each picture.  Then do a real live practice round.

This is also a strategy to reduce anxiety about Halloween.  You give your child a chance to know what will happen at every step, and what comes next.  Talk about unexpected things that might happen (What if someone jumps out and scares us?  What if it we fall down when we are walking?).

Step one : Put on your costume! The first thing we do is get dressed.  

Step 2: Second, we go to someone's door and knock or ring the door bell.

Step 3: Third, we wait for someone to answer and say "TRICK OR TREAT" (or hold up the sign).  Then we get one piece of candy.  We also say "Thank You!"

Step 4: Last, We walk to the next house! 

ARTICULATION PRACTICE: There are lots of ways to practice articulation during Halloween.  Here are some vocabulary words to practice based on common speech sound errors for preschoolers

P: Pumpkin, popcorn, porch
B: Bat, baby, black
H: Haunt, house, Halloween
K: Cat, candy, cobweb
G: Ghost, grave, goblin
F: Face paint, fang, fairy
M: Monster, mummy, moon

For more Halloween words to practice, go to this site.

Hijacking Story Time! What You Can Do to Books to Help Your Child With Speech.

Language therapy can be intimidating for many parents.  It's difficult to know what to do to help your child improve their speech!  I want to introduce a research-based strategy that can be used with a variety of kids that you can customize to your child's specific language goals.

Lets reflect back to the chart on normal development that I posted earlier.  Is your child working on building their core vocabulary, or their first 50 words?  Putting 2, 3, 4, or 5 words together?  Do they struggle with pronouns?  Past tense verbs?  Is/are?  Check on your child's long term IEP goals and you should be able to tell about where they're at and what they are working on.  This will be your "language target" during this week's activity.  You are going to hijack story time this week to model the type of language you want your child to be using.

1.  First thing you will need is a book your child will enjoy.  It can be a new book, or an old favorite.  If your child is old enough to know the words of the story, you may want to pick a new book because we are going to be changing the words.  If that won't bother them, then feel free to use their favorite story. Another great choice for this activity would be a book without words.  If you child isn't really into books, you might try a pop-up or flap book.  They can be a little more interactive and exciting for kids who aren't jazzed about sitting and turning pages.  You can also download a book on your tablet if that holds their interest a bit longer.

2.  Grab some sticky notes or a note pad, and open to the first page.  Take a sip of Dr. Pepper (or your beverage of choice) because things are about to get creative up in here.  Completely ignore any text or the "right words" of the book.

3.  Check out the pictures.  What could these characters be saying or doing that would hit your child's language target?  Maybe the are labeling things they see (working on nouns!).  They may not use any names, and refer to everyone as "he" or "she" (pronoun target!).  They may ask and answer lots of questions, like "who is____" or other wh- questions (another language target).  Write down some dialogue, and turn to page 2.

4.  Repeat the process!

One important tip: GET REPETITIVE.  Use your language target as many times as you can.  Make it borderline annoying!  Young kids need a lot of repetition, and they need even more when they have a delay in language.

Once your story is ready, wait for a time when your child wants to read with you.  If they aren't in the mood, don't force it!  If your kid's thinking about how they want to watch transformers the entire time your reading they will not hear a single word.  Plus, this is good bonding time.  Make it count.

Here is an example book that I have done.  I wanted to show a different target for each page, so you can see that this activity can work for whatever your child is working on!

Her is an example book I did based off of a board book called "You Are My Sunshine."
Each page is focused on a different language target, but make your entire book based on one target.  I just wanted to show a few different examples!

The first is targeting "she."  See what I mean by repetitive?

This next page is targeting wh questions, or spatial locations.  Either one works!

This page is targeting nouns in single words.

This page is targeting answering and asking questions.

I would love to hear how this activity went!  Let me know if you have any questions or want some feedback on your book pages!

Is that Normal??

I hear this one a lot, so I want to set some bounds of what is and is not "normal" by outlining speech basic speech and language development.  This doesn't have every milestone, but it will give you a general idea of what communication skills we see at each age.

For those who want to cut to the chase, here is the too-long-didn't-read version:

By age 5 most kids are 100% understandable (or intelligible, referring to speech sound errors) and sound pretty much like an adult (referring mainly to grammar).  If your child is not one of those two things, its probably NOT normal. 

I was going to create an awesome info graphic about language development based on the norms given by the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association, but I found this one and why reinvent the wheel?  I found it at North Shore Pediatric Therapy's website.

 Take a look and find what your child CAN do, then go through and see what they struggle with.  The last section has some ways to improve your child's language skills, and will will go into more depth on those techniques as the year goes on.

If you have specific questions about diagnosis, you should really consult with a speech pathologist.  This is just a great way to identify possible areas of need and make you aware of communication skills your child has already mastered.

Let me know what your main area of concern is.  What skill is your highest priority when working on speech goals this year?